Leave of Absence
by TheVideoGamer
Summary: Revisiting the orphanage from her childhood, Tanya experiences the differences that time has made, as well as the reactions of the people who used to know her. Crossposted on Tumblr as degurechaff-tanya.


"A...leave of absence?" She stared down at the letter in shock. Yes, it was true - the military was required to permit vacation days, and Tanya had never taken any of them.

 _If you choose not to take leave, that is acceptable as well. However, the maximum number of possible days has been reached, and you are recommended to use them, otherwise they will no longer increase._

She didn't have much to say. It was a good thing, really, to get out of battle for a while. Everything had been so touch-and-go up to this point that vacation hadn't actually crossed her mind. At this point, she could even take a pretty large one without any repercussions. But...there was one problem.

Tanya tapped her fingernails against the desk. "...Where to go...?" She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. She remembered, in her past life, reading quietly by the fireplace on holidays and being dragged to the events of relatives. A cousin's birthday, a Christmas party, a wedding… but she didn't have any of that anymore. There was no home to go back to, no fireplace of her own to read by, not even a cousin to send her an invitation she didn't want. Tanya was on her own-

Wait, where had she been before the military?

The door opened, and she saw watched Viktoriya walk into the room. "Hello, major! How are you?"

"I'm thinking," she sighed. "They want me to take a vacation."

Viktoriya's eyes widened. "Really? You must be excited, ma'am!"

Tanya shook her head. "I can't think of anywhere to vacation."

"Why don't you visit family?"

"Don't have any."

Viktoriya's eyes dropped to the floor. "Oh. Well, where were you before you joined the military?"

"I lived in an orphanage. It was a ratty place. I couldn't wait to get out."

"Why not visit there?"

Tanya gave her a skeptical look.

"I'm serious!" she laughed. "Don't you think they'd be happy to see you? Wouldn't they want to know how well you're doing?"

The major considered this. "...Well...I suppose so. There isn't anywhere else to go." She set the letter down on her desk with a sigh of defeat. "Alright. I'll go back."

-XXX-

It had been four years.

It was an oddly surreal sort of feeling to be standing in front of this building again. The fields of tilled soil, the peeling wood of the door, the tattered curtains in the windows. Everything looked exactly the same. Tanya adjusted her commander's cap and hoisted her rifle a bit higher on her shoulder. She was wearing the same uniform as always, but now she would be walking through these doors as a member of the nobility - as Tanya von Degurechaff, instead of a nameless foundling girl.

She wasn't sure what else to do, so she knocked on the door. It was as she began to hear voices raise inside and the sound of footsteps approaching, that she felt a strange sense of worry rise in her gut.

 _Should I have written to them ahead of time? Is it okay to come unsummoned like this?_

She wasn't sure why it even mattered. The only thing that marked these people different from the rest of the world was that they had known her longer than anyone else. Even before the members of her battalion, these people had known her.

A young woman answered the door. She couldn't have been older than twenty years old, and she was dressed in the traditional black and white garb of a Christian nun. "Hello-" she cut herself off as she looked Tanya's uniform up and down. "Um, what can we help you with...?"

Tanya frowned. "I-"

"Oh!" A voice from inside was quickly followed by more footsteps, and now there was a much older nun standing next to the younger one. "I'm sorry, we aren't..." her voice trailed off. "...is that...Tanya?"

Tanya nodded. "Sister Elisabeth, it's good to see you again."

The old woman's face lit up with surprise, and then joy. "You - oh goodness, how you've grown!" She turned to the nun next to her. "Sister Else, this is Tanya! Tanya, Sister Else!"

The younger nun held out her hand for Tanya to shake. "I'm sorry about that! I've just begun work here. Please come in."

As they walked into the main hallway, more memories came rushing back. It almost hurt Tanya's head to think about how many times she'd paced this hall, wondering what she would do with her new life. Before the military presented itself as an option to her, she'd felt directionless.

Each child they passed seemed to freeze and look at Tanya in awe. Some were young and new to the orphanage, but some were the same age as her. A few seemed to be trying to tie her face back to a memory, and the rest seemed oddly scared of the uniform she wore.

"What brings you here?" Sister Elisabeth asked. "After all these years?"

"I have some time off for a while, so I decided that I would come and visit." Tanya felt sort of awkward, though she couldn't place exactly why.

They walked in silence toward the common room until one boy stopped in his tracks and looked her right in the face. "Tanya?"

She nodded. "Walter."

He was wearing a white collared shirt and a pair of worn out shorts that he must've had for years. His face was dusty, his skin was pale, and he looked very skinny. "...You look so different now."

She nodded. "A lot has changed."

"A _lot?_ Well, duh it has!" He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her toward the common room at twice the pace she'd been going before. "C'mon, you gotta tell us everything!"

Tanya looked over her shoulder at the two nuns they were leaving behind.

"Go ahead!" Sister Elisabeth called, "catch up with them. We need to begin preparing lunch anyhow."

All of a sudden, Tanya found herself sitting on a torn sofa with nearly twenty pairs of eyes on her. Everyone was silent, sitting around the room, four on each of the two couches opposite Tanya, two on the coffee table, the rest scattered about the floor. No one sat next to Tanya.

It seemed that only the kids who knew her had decided to sit in for this. As she looked around, she began to recognize faces, and then match them to names. Ilse, Charlotte, Anna, Erich, Paul, Heinz, Otto... All wearing tattered clothes, all faces dusty and grimy, all bodies skinny and malnourished. And here Tanya was, back for the first time in nearly four years, wearing a freshly ironed uniform.

"So, I joined the military," she said.

"Obviously!" Erich said, and the others giggled quietly. "Tell us what happened after you left!"

"Have you killed anyone?"

"Can we touch your gun?"

"What's the war like?"

Tanya looked down at her hands. "It certainly puts food on the table...and clothes on your body...but I would never suggest that any of you enlist. You're likely to live longer if you stay here. I went because I'm a mage, and I knew I'd have to go eventually."

"That's why we don't like it when military officials come to the door," Ilse said. She was a year older than Tanya. "Sister Elisabeth tells us that if we have magic, they'll come for us when we're older. They make people go to the military, even if they don't want to."

"It happened with me," Charlotte said. The year after you left, we had to take the magic aptitude test again. And I hadn't ever scored before, but that time I scored a B. So they said they'd come back when I'm older. And I'm still waiting."

"Sister Else did seem concerned when she saw my uniform."

"She probably thought you were there to take Charlotte," Otto mumbled.

Tanya frowned. "...Well, it's not as dangerous for a mage as a regular soldier, in my opinion. They're more elite because there's fewer of them. The military values them and tries not to let anything happen to them." She gave a small smile. "I'm still alive, aren't i?"

"Well, yeah, that's true," Heinz nodded.

Just then, Sister Mary appeared in the doorway. "Children, it's time for lunch!"

Everyone got up and dispersed, except for Tanya, who stood up slowly and watched them go.

Sister Elisabeth gave her a sincere, motherly kind of smile. "I'm glad to see you doing so well. I wasn't expecting to ever hear from you again after you left. We didn't know what happened to you!"

Tanya smiled back politely. "I feel like such an outsider now."

The nun shook her head. "It's all in your mind, dear. You've just...done a lot of growing up since we last saw you. You talk like an adult!"

"Do I?" She knew the answer.

"Yes!" Sister Elisabeth sighed. "You barely ever used to speak. It seems like this military career was a blessing in disguise for you. A surprising act of God."

"Right..." Tanya laughed nervously. "Act of _God..._ "

She stayed for two nights at the orphanage. The whole time, she was being told by Sister Elisabeth to "visit again soon", and by Ilse to "win the war for them". Why had everything felt so awkward? Why did Tanya care so much about these people?

 _Do I feel guilty for being better off than them?_

She cursed herself for this. Everything was going great in her career, and she'd almost settled back into her old state of being - the ability to simply play by the rules of the game and achieve success. But she hadn't felt this...emotional - maybe even vulnerable - since the Empire's armistice fell apart with the Entente Alliance.

Before she knew it, it was time to leave.

Tanya put her commander's cap back on her head and smiled at the row of kids in the hallway. They had all assembled to see her out, so she wracked her brain for some parting words to give them.

"I'll visit again soon. I'll bring lots of food when I do, and we can have a formal lunch."

That seemed to brighten the looks on their dusty faces.

What else...? Oh. "And, Charlotte," Tanya looked over at the girl.

She was standing next to Sister Else with an endless look of confliction on her face. She seemed to be in a constant state of worry, always trying to settle some mental dilemma in her head. Was she always this way, or had Tanya's arrival triggered this worry in her? There was no way to tell. She looked up when Tanya said her name.

"Don't worry about becoming a military mage someday. Fate has a plan for you. You can join my battalion, and we can beat the Republicans together."

Charlotte gave a small smile at that.

"In fact, the war is likely to be over by the time you're drafted anyway."

"So true," Heinz nodded.

"Have a safe travel, dear!" Sister Elisabeth gave Tanya one final hug. "We'll be sure to write!"

"I'll be waiting to hear from you." She turned leave.

"Wait, Tanya."

She turned back around. It was Charlotte.

Charlotte gave her a salute. "Thank you."

Tanya saluted her back, then stepped out the door.

-XXX-

"Well?" Viktoriya sat down across from her. "How was your vacation? Did you go back to the orphanage after all?"

Tanya was writing vigorously at her desk, mind in her work. "Hm? Sorry, what?"

"Did you enjoy your vacation?" Viktoriya smiled excitedly. "I'd love to hear about it!"

"Well...it wasn't bad. They recognized me. That was good."

"Of course they did! You're family to them, I imagine."

Tanya's quill pen froze for a second as she glanced up at Viktoriya. "I suppose so." She immediately dove back into the paper.

"What are you writing?"

"Just addressing some formalities." There was a bit of silence as Tanya signed her name at the bottom. Done. "They truly don't make enough money in that ratty old orphanage to supply all those kids with what they need...so I'm making some arrangements."

"Aw! That's sweet!"

Tanya reread the last paragraph. It was the least she could do, but it would suffice for now.

 _Enclosed is enough money to buy food for a few weeks. I will send more soon. Thank you again for your hospitality over the last couple of days._

 _-Major Tanya von Degurechaff_


End file.
